Africa Day 2017
Workshop Participants
Funmi Arewa
Director, Center for African
Business, Law &
Entrepreneurship
Professor, UCI School of Law
Victoria Bernal
Professor
Dept. of Anthropology, UCI
School of Social Sciences
Tina Beyene
UC Presidential Fellow
Dept. of History, UCI School
of Humanities
Olufunmilayo B. Arewa is Professor of Law and Anthropology (by courtesy) at the
University of California, Irvine School of Law. She received an M.A. and Ph.D.
(Anthropology) from the University of California, Berkeley, an A.M. (Applied
Economics) from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an
A.B. from Harvard College. Her research focuses on issues related to culture, law, and
business, with an emphasis on music, film, technology, and Africana studies. In 2015
she received a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Faculty Visit Research
Grant for a research project entitled Cultural, Legal, and Business Considerations in
the Diffusion of Jazz in Germany. Professor Arewa has studied classical voice for many
years.
Victoria Bernal is a cultural anthropologist whose scholarship in political
anthropology contributes to media and IT studies, gender studies, and African
studies. Her work addresses questions relating to politics, gender, migration and
diaspora, war, globalization, transnationalism, civil society and activism,
development, digital media, and Islam. Dr. Bernal’s research is particularly concerned
with relations of power and inequality and the dynamic struggles of ordinary people
as they confront the cruel and absurd contradictions arising from the concentration
of wealth and political power locally and globally. She has carried out ethnographic
research in Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Silicon Valley and cyberspace. Her articles and
chapters have appeared in various collections as well as in anthropological, African
Studies, and interdisciplinary journals, including American Ethnologist, Cultural
Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Global Networks, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, African Studies Review, and Political and Legal Anthropology
Review. Bernal teaches courses on Digital Media and Culture, Global Africa, Nations,
States and Gender, and the Politics of Protest among others.
Tina Beyene is an interdisciplinary scholar with research and teaching interests in
postcolonial studies; transnational and women of color feminisms; gender-based
violence in conflict zones in Africa; critical development studies and women in the
horn and central Africa. She is currently a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC
Irvine where she is working on her first book, a comparative colonial genealogy of
rape in contemporary African conflict zones, namely in the 1994 Rwanda genocide
and the wars of the DRC between 1996-2003, conflicts that took place in two former
Belgian colonies. She is also working on a project analyzing gender based violence
and transitional justice in post-communist Ethiopia. She completed her Ph.D. in
Gender Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and she is a former
editor and publisher at South End Press where she worked on projects in areas such
as reproductive, environmental, criminal justice, and foreign policy. In the fall, she
will be joining the Women’s Studies program as an assistant professor at the
University of New Hampshire.
Africa Day 2017
Peter J. Bloom
Peter J. Bloom is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC 0Santa
Barbara. He has published widely on French colonial and francophone film and
media, but has been more recently working on the context for British colonial film
and radio in Ghana and Malaya. His current project Onomatopoeia and Empire
addresses the unifying context for radio-cinema modernity by reference to
Counterinsurgency and Pan-Africanism. His presentation today will address
conceptions of media affect related to the staging and history of propaganda during
the Malayan Emergency, from 1948 to 1960.
Associate Professor of Film
and Media Studies
UC Santa Barbara
David Kaye
Director, International Justice
Clinic
Clinical Professor, UCI School
of Law
Mark Levine
Professor of Modern Middle
Eastern History and History
UCI School of Humanities
David Kaye is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the International Justice Clinic
at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. His scholarship and teaching
focus on public international law, especially international human rights law,
international humanitarian law, accountability for violations of human rights, and the
law governing the use of force. Professor Kaye began his legal career with the U.S.
State Department, handling such subjects as international claims, nuclear
nonproliferation, international humanitarian law, and accountability for war crimes,
crimes against humanity and genocide. Prior to joining UC Irvine, he co-founded
UCLA’s International Human Rights Program and founded its International Justice
Clinic. Professor Kaye is an active member of the American Society of International
Law and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also published essays and opinion
pieces in mainstream publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New
York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. Professor Kaye has been appointed by the
UN Human Rights Council to serve as Special Rapporteur on the promotion and
protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, effective August 1,
2014, for three years.
Mark Levine is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History and History at the UCI
School of Humanities. He received his B.A. in comparative religion and biblical
studies from Hunter College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University's
Department of Middle Eastern Studies. Levine is an accomplished rock guitarist and
has played with noted rock and world beat musicians such as Mick Jagger, Chuck D,
Michael Franti, and Doctor John. He recorded with Moroccan Hassan Hakmoun and
the French Gypsy band Les Yeux Noirs on Ozomatli's album Street Signs which won
the Grammy for Best Latin Rock/Alternative album in 2005. His third book, Heavy
Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Soul of Islam, was published by Random House
in 2008 and expanded into an award-winning PBS documentary, “Before the Spring,
After the Fall” as well as an album. His fourth single-authored book, Impossible Peace:
Israel/Palestine since 1989, was published by Zed Books in 2009. As journalist,
Professor Levine is presently a senior columnist at al-Jazeera English and a regular
contributor to al-Jazeera America. He has also written for publications including
Jadaliyya, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Christian
Science Monitor, and TIKKUN.
Africa Day 2017
Lukas Ligeti
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Music, UCI School of
the Arts
Cecelia Lynch
Professor
Dept. of Political Science,
UCI School of Social Sciences
Lukas Ligeti is Assistant Professor of Integrated Composition, Improvisation and
Technology at the UCI School of the Arts. He is a composer and improvisor (on drums
and electronic percussion) whose work is informed by a unique approach to rhythm
and a special interest in intercultural collaboration. His compositions have been
commissioned by Bang on a Can, the Kronos Quartet, Ensemble Modern, the
American Composers Orchestra, the Vienna Festival, Goethe Institute, Armitage
Gone! Dance, and many others. As a drummer, he has worked with John Zorn,
Marilyn Crispell, Gary Lucas, John Tchicai, Henry Kaiser, Miya Masaoka, Michael
Manring, etc., and co-leads the trio Hypercolor with Eyal Maoz and James Ilgenfritz.
He has given solo concerts on four continents, performing on the Marimba Lumina, a
MIDI controller designed by Don Buchla. He co-founded the ensemble Beta Foly in
Côte d'Ivoire and co-leads Burkina Electric, the first electronica band from Burkina
Faso. Lukas studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in
Vienna, Austria, his city of birth. He is completing a Ph.D. at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he was previously composer-inresidence, and has also taught at the University of Ghana. Among other prizes, he
received, in 2010, the CalArts Alpert Award in Music.
Cecelia Lynch specializes in international politics, focusing on questions of religion
and ethics, humanitarianism, civil society, and peace movements, and
interpretive/qualitative methodologies. She currently focuses on the ethics of Islamic
and Christian NGOs in humanitarian work in Africa, the Middle East, and the centers
of NGO power such as Geneva, London, New York, and Washington, D.C. She cofounded and co-edits the blog, “Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in
Africa,” or The CIHA Blog, at www.cihablog.com, which brings religious and critical
perspectives into humanitarian debates, and she is a member of the Africa Working
Group of the Contending Modernities project at the University of Notre Dame. She is
the author or co-author of three books and two edited volumes, including
Interpreting International Politics (2014), Strategies for Research in Constructivist
International Relations (2007, with Audie Klotz), and Beyond Appeasement:
Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics (1999), which won two prizes.
She has been awarded fellowships from the Social Science Research
Council/MacArthur Foundation, American Association of University Women, Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation, and the Henry Luce Foundation, and her articles on IR theory,
law, diplomacy, religion, ethics and social movements have appeared in International
Studies Quarterly, International Theory, Millenium, Ethics & International Relations,
Global Governance, International Journal, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development,
and numerous edited volumes.
Africa Day 2017
Erin Mosely
Assistant Professor
Dept. of History, Chapman
University College of Arts,
Humanities and Social
Sciences
Crystal Murphy
Erin Mosely is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, Chapman University
College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in African
Studies and History from Harvard University. Her research explores the influence of
global discourses such as human rights and transitional justice on the production of
history in the wake of prolonged conflict and war. Particular interests include the
politics of memory and memoriali-zation practice, atrocity archiving, the role of legal
procedure and legal vocabularies in shaping individual narratives about the past, and
the dynamic interplay between national international, and lo-cal interest in
determining how history gets framed.
Crystal Murphy is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science,
Chapman University College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She received a
B.A. from Vanguard University of Southern California, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from
the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Murphy's research focuses on conflict and
post-conflict development, political economy and sustainability topics, and promotes
qualitative methods for policy oriented scholarship. She has worked for and carried
out research with several institutions in East Africa. She has recently worked in the
Sudan exploring micro-credit programs in post-war societies.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Political Science,
Chapman University College
of Arts, Humanities and
Social Sciences
Bryan Reynolds
Chancellor's Professor
Dept. of Drama, UCI School
of the Arts
Bryan Reynolds is Claire Trevor Professor at the Department of Drama, UCI School
of the Arts. Reynolds’ research spans several disciplines, including critical theory,
history, performance studies, social semiotics, philosophy, cognitive neuroscience,
dramatic literature, and African and Middle Eastern studies. It focuses on the
experience, articulation, and performance of consciousness, subjectivity, affects, and
sociocultural formations, particularly the ideologies, politics, passions, and
geographies that define them, both on and off the stage. His publications include, as
author, Intermedial Theater: Performance Philosophy, Transversal Poetics, and the
Future of Affect (2016); Transversal Subjects: From Montaigne to Deleuze after
Derrida (2009); and Transversal Enterprises in the Drama of Shakespeare and his
Contemporaries: Fugitive Explorations (2006). Reynolds is also a playwright,
performer, director of theater, and cofounder and Artistic Director of the Transversal
Theater Company, which has produced a number of his plays in the United States,
Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, including: Unbuckled; Woof,
Daddy; Railroad; Blue Shade; Lumping in Fargo; Eve's Rapture; The Green Knight;
and Fractalicious!
Africa Day 2017
Pat Seed
Professor
Dept. of History, UCI School
of Humanities
Frank B. Wilderson III
Director, UCI School of
Humanities Culture and
Theory Ph.D. Program
Professor, Dept. of Drama
and African American
Studies, UCI School of Arts
and School of Humanities
Tekle Woldemikael
Professor
Dept. of Sociology, Chapman
University College of Arts,
Humanities and Social
Sciences
Pat Seed is an American historian and professor at the Department of History, UCI
School of Humanities. She specializes in the history of cartography and navigation,
and is the foremost authority on latitude as it relates to the historical use of maps in
maritime exploration. Professor Seed received her Ph.D. from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Her specialities include history of the early modern and colonial
European eras, especially in relation to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking cultures.
She published To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage
Choice, 1574–1821 in 1992, and Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of
the New World, 1492–1640 in 1995. In 2001 she published American Pentimento: The
Invention of Indians and the Pursuit of Riches, and a year later she was awarded
the American Historical Association's James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History. Her
latest book, Jose Limon and La Malinche, was published by the University of Texas
Press in 2008, and her work on digital restoration of historical maps won two national
digital humanities fellowship/awards for 2007-2008 (ACLS & NEH).
Frank B. Wilderson III is a professor in the Department of African American Studies at
UC Irvine. He is also the Director of the Culture & Theory PhD Program. Professor
Wilderson spent five and a half years in South Africa where he was one of two
Americans to have held elected office in the African National Congress during the
apartheid era. He also worked as a psychological warfare, secret propaganda, and
covert operations cadre for the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto We Sizwe. His books
include, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid; and Red, White, & Black: Cinema
and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. In addition to being an activist and scholar, Dr.
Wilderson is also a creative writer; and through his creative writing he has received a
National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship; The Maya Angelou Award for
Best Fiction Portraying the Black Experience in America; the Zora Neale
Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award; The Eisner Prize for Creative Achievement of
the Highest Order; The Judith Stronach Award for Poetry, and The American Book
Award.
Tekle Woldemikael is Professor at the Department of Sociology, Chapman
University College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Tekle has taught at
various Universities and Colleges including Redlands University, where he was the
Chair of Sociology and Anthropology, Hamilton College, where he was the Chair of
Africana Studies, University of Hartford and University of Gezira in the Sudan. His
research interest involves studying immigrants and refugees, racial identity, ethnicity
and nationalism, language and public policy. He is an author of book, Becoming Black
American: Haitians and American Institutions in Evanston, Illinois. He co-edited a
special issue of The American Sociologist on "Racial Diversity in Becoming a
Sociologist." His articles have appeared in numerous journals and edited books. He is
working on a book titled, The Invention of Eritrean National Identity. He teaches
Social Theory, Integrative Seminar, Race and Ethnic Relations, and African Society.
He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
Africa Day 2017
Sheron Wray
Associate Professor
Dept. of Dance, UCI School
of the Arts
Sheron Wray is Associate Professor at the Department of Dance, UCI School of the
Arts. She is a choreographer and director, and formerly a dancer with London
Contemporary Dance Theatre and Rambert Dance Company. For over 12 years she
was the Artistic Director of JazzXchange music and Dance Company in London. Her
dance and theatre works are collaborative and include works with Wynton Marsalis,
Derek Bermel, and Mojisola Adebayo. Her most recent work is within interactive
theatre; engaging audiences in performance through handheld technologies. Her
work continues to be performed across Europe, North America and Southern Africa.
She teaches Jazz, choreography and improvisation. Her Masters in Performing Arts is
from Middlesex University, UK.